RABIES IN THE HORSE. — SYMPTOMS. 
587 
which we rarely see in the nobler and more intellectual dog. A 
horse that had shewn symptoms of great ferocity was standing 
in the corner of his box, with a heaving flank, and with every 
muscle quivering from the degree of excitement under which he 
laboured, when a groom, presuming on the former obedience of 
the animal, would venture in, and endeavour to put a headstall 
upon him. Neither the master nor myself could persuade him 
to the contrary. I was sure of mischief, for I marked the ear 
fairly lying upon the neck, and I could see the backward glance 
of the eye ; I therefore armed myself with a heavy twitch stick 
that was at hand, and climbed into the manger of the next box. 
The man had not advanced two steps into the box before I could 
see the shifting position of the fore feet, and the preparation to 
spring upon his victim ; and he would have sprung upon him, but 
my weapon fell with all the force I could urge upon his head, 
and he dropped : the man escaped, but the brute was up again in 
an instant, and we trembled lest the partition of his box would 
yield to his violence, and he would realize the graphic description 
of Mr. Blaine, when he speaks of the rabid horse as ‘‘levelling 
every thing before him, himself sweating, and snorting, and 
foaming amidst the ruins.” 
Biting himself , — I have had occasion more than once to wit- 
ness the evident pain of the bitten part, and the manner in 
which the horse in the intervals of his paroxysms employs him- 
self in licking and gnawing the cicatrix. There is an account of 
one horse that had been bitten in the chest, and he, not in the 
intervals between the exacerbation, but when the paroxysm was 
most violent, would bite and tear himself until the breast was 
shockingly mangled, and the blood flowed from it in a stream. 
Hydrophobia . — The most interesting and satisfactory symptom 
is the evident dread of water, and the impossibility to swallow any 
considerable quantity, which exists in the decided majority ofcases. 
Professor Dupuy gives an account of this very much to our purpose. 
“ A rabid horse was confined in one of the sick boxes. His food 
was thrown to him through an opening over the door, and a bucket 
was suspended from the door, and supplied with water by means 
of a copper tube. As soon as he heard the water falling into the 
pail, he fell into violent convulsions, seized the tube, and crushed 
it to pieces. When the water in his bucket was agitated, the 
convulsions were renewed. He would occasionally approach the 
bucket as if he wished to drink, and then, after agitating the 
water for an instant, he would fall on his litter, uttering a hoarse 
cry ; but he would rise again almost immediately. These symp- 
toms were dreadfully increased if water was thrown upon his head. 
He would then endeavour to seize it as it fell, and bite with fury 
